Tuesday, January 31, 1950

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 31, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President approved the development of the hydrogen bomb and directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue working on all forms of atomic weapons, including the hydrogen bomb, to insure security for the nation.

The Atomic Energy Commission, in its semiannual report to Congress, said that the atomic bomb stockpile was growing and that it was investigating use of lithium and how three different forms of hydrogen could be used to produce atomic energy in the laboratory.

Let's see, that must be deuterium, tritium, and idiom.

In Tokyo, General MacArthur received the Joint Chiefs for consultation, with China and Formosa leading the list of probable topics of discussion.

The President appointed a fact-finding board and called for the coal miners and management to engage in a 70-day hiatus in the ongoing captive steel company mines strike, now including more than 100,000 miners, pending the recommendations to be issued in 60 days.

In Norfolk, Va., the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, on which the formal surrender of Japan had been received September 2, 1945, was still stuck in the mud despite a two-hour Navy effort to free it with a fleet of 21 tugboats and two heavy salvage vessels. The pull would resume the following day. A lower than normal high tide was cited as the cause of the failed first attempt. The Missouri had run aground on January 17. The pull was originally set for Groundhog Day, when a high high-tide had been predicted.

Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan told the Senate Agriculture Committee that he would destroy 50 million bushels of surplus potatoes owned by the Government unless Congress instructed him to take other steps for disposition. The potatoes could not be given away to foreign governments, to domestic school lunch programs or even as feed for livestock for the fact that they would rot during shipment or subsequent storage. The potatoes could be used for making alcohol, but the producers would only take them if the Government paid the 15 million dollar transportation costs. The potatoes had been purchased under the price-support program for $2 per hundred pounds. To remedy the problem in the future, former Secretary of Agriculture, Senator Clinton Anderson, urged that Congress should either allow the Department of Agriculture to limit production or eliminate price supports for potatoes completely. He said that the current acreage limitation only encouraged farmers to produce more per acre.

In Carlsbad, N.M., the potash workers had agreed to end their two and a half month old strike on agreed terms, after the NLRB had obtained an injunction against the strike.

In Asheville, N.C., former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds declared the previous night that he would be a candidate against interim incumbent Senator Frank Graham, in the special election to fill the seat. Mr. Reynolds's platform endorsed states' rights and promised $100 pensions for everyone. The United Textile Workers of America and other labor organizations, meanwhile, endorsed Senator Graham and denounced former Senator Reynolds.

In St. Pauls, N.C., in Robeson County, two gunmen robbed and kidnaped a couple this date, releasing the woman a few miles from her home, then sped away with the man toward the South Carolina border, driving a 1949 Plymouth sedan belonging to the couple. The men were identified by the woman, and the solicitor said that they had been in trouble previously.

Better get 'em before they hit the swamp or you'll never see 'em again onced they get down 'ere.

In Charlotte, a fourth man was expected to be arrested in the conspiracy to blow up the WBT radio tower. The named individual had allegedly driven the car in which the man had arrived at the scene to blow up the tower with dynamite on January 22, interrupted by police who were on the scene after finding the dynamite hidden in the woods. The man's nephew had been arrested as the contact person between the principal and a man arrested for having hired the principal. The defendant accused of hiring the man was an employee of WBT and head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local, which had been on strike against WBT.

Tom Fesperman of The News continues his look at special education of mentally and physically handicapped children in Charlotte, visiting a school with classes for eleven physically handicapped children, ranging in age from 6 to 18. They were the only such children in the community receiving special education. One of the students who got around on crutches was rated a "genius" by psychologists.

In Demopolis, Ala., the "Miss Demopolis" contest was about to proceed when it was realized by the sponsors that there were no judges for the beauty contest. Three traveling salesmen, no doubt one from Nantucket, were quickly drafted for the purpose, their protests notwithstanding. After making their selection, they left quickly without staying for thanks, probably one step ahead of the shotgun.

On the editorial page, "The Electoral College: Outmoded" finds that nearly every Congress since shortly after the Founding had before it some proposal to revise or eliminate the curious convention of the electoral college, which took from the people the right directly to elect their President and Vice-President, placing the choice instead in the hands of electors who were supposed to be selectmen from their various localities and states.

But the original concept, to protect against popular election of a despot or king, had long since ceased to be served as electors were merely chosen for political affinity to one party or the other which their slate represented, without account for any special objectivity or being above reproach in their selection process.

There was a Senate Joint Resolution pending in 1950 to amend the Constitution to abolish electors while retaining the electoral vote for each state, but based on proportionality rather than the winner-take-all formula which all states then followed, though not constitutionally mandated. The resolution was sponsored by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts and received active support from two other Republican and three Democratic Senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, as well as support from many prominent political scientists.

The piece thinks it a wise move, one which would help to end the grip of the one-party system on the South by providing Republicans with proportional representation in the division of electors.

This move came at a time when the electoral college had not been an issue in any election since 1888, in the first Cleveland-Harrison election, in which incumbent President Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the electoral college to Benjamin Harrison. With the experiences of 2000 and 2016 now in our store as a nation, it is far past time to do away with this undemocratic holdover from colonial times when the motivating fear was election of the equivalent of a new king, at a time when there were no term limits on the presidency. The electoral college presents itself now as only a gaming device for the most savvy political operators who can present a slick, packaged candidate to the less sophisticated corner-pockets of the nation for ready consumption, chosen strategically for their demographic makeup, stressing salesmanship rather than leadership in campaigns.

The 2016 campaign of the Republican reached an historical nadir in its outright appeal to the very lowest common denominator of society, with strategic targeting of electoral votes in mind, ignoring the popular will of the people rejecting such demagogy, as expressed repeatedly in polls preceding the election, turning, in the process, the purpose of the electoral college on its head.

It has led to cynicism and disrespect both for the office of the Presidency and the democracy, itself. You can only bend the majority or plurality democratic will, expressed at the ballot box, back on itself so many times until the system completely breaks and ceases to operate. We have in 2017 reached that point. There is no President with any moral authority to lead the country. It is a convenient fiction for "conservative" Republicans, in fact bent on representing only the moneyed interests of corporate America while selling "people power" to the gullible and confused, to think that they enjoy majority support in the country when clearly they do not, by at least 2.9 million votes, the expressed plurality for former Secretary of State Clinton in 2016, representing fully two percent of the votes cast. And the result is going to lead to increasing chaos over the next four years.

The system is broken, having been gamed by the slickers, and it is time finally to fix it by doing away with this elitist convention which long ago outlived its usefulness. All arguments for it are only rationalizations, stuck in the horse and buggy era, fueled by the droppings of political expediency. Were it the case that two Democrats had been "elected" pursuant only to the electoral college in the past 16 years, the howls would be never-ending from Republicans to do away with it. Yet, most Republicans are strangely silent on the topic.

Democrats must enlist a few conscientious Republicans who place the good of the nation ahead of bitterly partisan politics and act to end the insanity before the insanity ends us as a democratic country. If not accomplished through amendment initiated in Congress, then it should take place either through state conventions or through the ongoing state-by-state process to make proportionality the rule by legislative action, not requiring amendment of the Constitution.

"We Need the Draft Machinery" supports the Administration effort to extend the peacetime draft despite no inductions having occurred during the previous year. Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray had urged that Congress do so for the need for ready mobilization in the event of war. With the machinery for the draft in place, he said, four to seven months would be saved in mobilization potential. Furthermore, failing to have the draft in place while urging other nations to be militarily prepared would be seen by allies as abandoning promises. The present proposal required further Congressional approval before inductions resumed. The piece thinks it an adequate safeguard from abuse.

"Playing Politics with Taxes" finds that the President was wise in urging Congress to balance reductions in taxes with new revenue. House Republicans who were trying to push through cuts in the excise taxes before any consideration was given to new sources of revenue were not acting in the interest of sound fiscal policy. It was a political trick so that the GOP could claim credit for getting rid of the excise taxes while also blaming the Administration for deficit spending, in making the deficit even larger than the projected 5.1 billion dollars for the coming fiscal year.

It concludes that if both parties wanted to prove to the people their sincerity in balancing the budget to the extent possible, then cuts in spending would need take place. At that point, tax reduction could be effected without adding to the deficit.

"An Honor for Mr. Scott" congratulates Governor Kerr Scott for being honored by The Carolina Israelite of Harry Golden as the Carolinian with the most outstanding contribution to human rights during 1949, and praises him as deserving of the award for his work in various programs during his first year in office. Among them were the inclusion of blacks for the first time on State boards and women in the management of State affairs, protection of the rights of workers, his campaign for better schools and roads, and placing pressure on public utilities to provide better and expanded services, especially in rural areas.

There were drawbacks, such as his removal of political enemies from State Government, but, it concludes, compassion for human rights did not usually apply to political enemies.

A piece from the New York Times, titled "For Equality in the Army", praises the Army for completing and getting ready to implement its plan for integration of black personnel based on skills only, without regard to discriminatory quotas. The stress on basic values led to human justice. Such had been recognized in such fields as sport and there was no reason not to apply the concept to every human endeavor in society.

A piece from the Chapel Hill Weekly praises the recommendation by the special committee of trustees that Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray be named president of the Greater University and defends the selection against any criticism that Mr. Gray was not an educator. It points out that some of the most progressive and successful presidents of the University, David Swain and Kemp P. Battle, both of whom served in the nineteenth century, had not been educators. Yet, Mr. Battle assembled one of the best faculties in the nation at the time, with six of the twelve or so members being prominent in their areas of scholarship.

Acting president and University comptroller William D. Carmichael, Jr., it concludes, had good reason to praise the selection of Mr. Gray, who, it believes, would make an excellent administrator, as he had of the Army and in business.

Drew Pearson tells of Congressman John Dingell of Michigan having recently told the President that the cutting of 7,000 IRB agents from the payroll two years earlier had cost the Government $30 in tax fraud for every dollar saved in salaries. While most of the agents had been rehired, the cut had caused 300,000 tax fraud cases, many close to completion, to be dropped.

Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado, a Republican, enjoyed poking fun at the stolidity of his party, as when he said that the proposed Echo Park dam in his state, which had drawn protests for concern that it would cover dinosaur beds, would lead his fellow Republicans, even if the project did not disturb the beds, to dig up the bones and make them into a new national chairman.

At a meeting of the National Security Council, the State and Defense Departments had been alerted of the prospect of the Russians creating a false "peace offensive" by agreeing to withhold from development the hydrogen bomb provided the U.S. followed suit. The purpose would be to confuse American public opinion on the bomb so as to delay its development.

The theory of the hydrogen bomb was not secret, as Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois proved when he explained it to an atomic official after reading Professor Einstein and the publicly released Smyth Report of 1945 on the development of the atomic bomb.

John L. Lewis was suffering in stature among the rank-and-file miners for the three-day work week which had slashed their wages by $33 per week.

But the Bureau of Mines had determined that coal was on the way out because of overcapacity, high cost, and the competition from cheaper natural gas and oil. The railroads had cut use of coal from 135 million tons per year during the war to 70 million tons. Coal consumption had decreased slightly in consumer usage for home heating, because of natural gas and oil furnaces being installed. Some 25,000 miles of new natural gas pipelines had been approved by the FPC.

These facts would result in a glut of coal if the five-day work week were re-instituted, with consequent cutthroat prices driving out all but the most efficient operators.

He notes that the coal industry had enjoyed only eight good years in the previous 25, and those had been the result of the war.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the state of farm price supports as part of the so-called "welfare state", whereby farmers were guaranteed a living. It applied to all major crops, subject to outright purchases by the Government-run Consumer Credit Corporation or loans against the security of the crop. The CCC stored the surplus crops and then sold them either in domestic commerce or foreign commerce or as part of foreign aid, when practical, avoiding glutting the market and lowering the price.

The Government, in the process, regulated acreage supported, to avoid the prospect of overproduction to the extent practicable.

While in theory the system was designed to be beneficial to farmers and consumers, in practice it was rife with special interests. For instance, the Brannan plan, whereby subsidies would be paid directly to farmers to provide a reasonable price while keeping consumer prices low at the market, had been replaced with the plan of Senator Clinton Anderson, Mr. Brannan's predecessor as Secretary of Agriculture. The Anderson plan included tung nuts, honey and pulled wool in its price support system, whereas the Brannan plan did not, and so the Senators from the states which produced those products banded together to support the Anderson plan.

The Brannan plan proposed to put a ceiling on the worth of crops which could be subject to a subsidy, to eliminate the practice of the corporate farms deliberately overproducing to take advantage of the price support program. But that smacked of socialism and so had been resisted. Also, farmers were resistant to additional acreage controls.

Yet, even the most conservative Republicans supported the idea of guaranteeing the farmers a living. But without controls on acreage, there would be overproduction of every crop until the whole system collapsed. So if controls were to be attacked, then so, too, had to be subsidies and price supports.

The Alsops conclude that the real danger in state planning arose from the power of special interests in Congress and the notion of having one's cake and eating it, too, rather than the fallibility of the planners.

Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the schools of Albemarle, N.C., in the twenty-second in his series of articles on childhood education, discusses report cards and the need for parents to peruse them and sign them. The signature was not an indication of approval of the grades, as some parents believed, but inspection only.

There were instances where children sought to fool parents into signing the report card or committed outright forgery, and it was up to the parents, not the teacher, to insure that they were aware of when the report cards issued and then to inspect them.

There were efforts in some school districts to change the psychology of grading by switching from the traditional five-level grades to "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory", the latter to measure performance progress versus demonstrated aptitude and thus gauge each student by their abilities. In some systems, in lieu of grades, notes were sent by teachers to parents telling of the pupil's weaknesses and strengths. The parents and teachers, he recommends, ought work together to find ways of grading which helped the students progress rather than necessarily sticking by the traditional grading system for the sake of it, because the parents had been graded on the A-F scale. That way, students who worked hard but failed to achieve high grades would not feel inferior and simply give up after awhile.

Framed Edition

Links-Date — Links-Subj.